Halo

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The eerie glow that cast a pall over the landscape told a tale of its own. I was already too late. The dial has been cast. I shot my foot down hurling the Ute over the rough terrain slamming over bumps and protrusions that seemed to appear before my vehicle even as I approached. The hindrance spell was in works. The cult’s darkness was working against me. I felt a snarl break free as frustrations grew. I knew what this clearly meant. The innocents were being slaughtered. An offering was being made.

A sharp ledge was forming just before me but I pressed on and slammed over its edge to land with a resounding impact and with a quick manoeuvre that sent my tires squealing over the loose gravel sending a spray of dirt every which way till I managed to pull the vehicle to a halt just before an otherwise ordinary looking shack. But that was how the darkness worked. It concealed, displaying only the merest flicker of reality that only a trained eye such as mine could pick out.

I threw the car into park and shut the engine. The sudden silence was deafening. Without removing my eyes from the shack in front. I swung my hand behind my seat to tug on my pack. Then I climbed out of my Ute with slow cautious steps. Anything could pop out at me here. The sky was the limit and then some. The ground was considerably worse.

I started to move forward hesitantly. Pocketing my keys along the way and swing my pack onto my back. I approached the seemingly harmless shack bare fisted with only a hum of a chant in my mind that I knew could and would blow the shack to smithereens. But only if it was first found empty of innocents.

Although it was well past the break of dawn, the surrounding of the shack was all dense gloom. I looked up to the dark clouds over hanging and wondered if it would merely rain hail stones this time instead of the usual bout of plague.

Taking a final deep breath that I instantly regretted assailed by the foul smell of putrid faeces. I coughed and pinched the bridge of my nose at the fetid smell that skunked up my nostrils. Then I just pushed opened the damned door…and all hell broke loose. Literally.

Years of training and honed skills kicked into reflex and I hurled myself forward through the minuscule gape between two swiping blades. The cult dressed in dark hooded robes came forward to greet me. Having dived forward I threw up my own blades to fend off the onslaught of on comers waging war against me twisting and turning to meet and return each and every strike. But there were too many and my movements started to slow allowing for nicks and slashes to penetrate my and leave behind bleeding flesh wounds. Still I warred on keeping a look out for the innocents I had come to protect. A leaping assailent crashed onto my back sending us both sprawling forwards onto the hard ground. I hit the ground rolling then back flipped up before managing a simultaneous spin kick that sent my assailants at the back sprawling onto their asses. Then, I dove forward again somersaulting over the fallen assailants to trust my blades through yet more of the same. But the landscape was shifting even as I moved forward. My actions were weakening the collective. The power rush sourced from the very bowls of hell was being disrupted. No longer was I in the rustic looking shack but I found myself coming to an abrupt halt as I stood at the precipice of the flaming pit of hell.

I cried out my lesser chants and trust my blades back into their holds only to tug out the double barrelled cannon shot loaded with spelled pellets that would send these pelicans to a frosty hell. I aimed and fired then clicked the reload and ran through my pellets slugs with unerring precision and marked speed. It wasn’t long before I ran out of ammunition but I hadn’t long to go. My chants were working the pit before me was closing. It was not really an illusion but was in fact a doorway to hell. One I would have shut all the way through once I was done here. I leaped forward. My mage blood and the power of the elixir doing their bit to launch me across the gaping distance. I cleared the fiery pit only to crash into yet more cults members and then there were the pelicans themselves. A double horned beasts, the hellbound hounds.

I ran for it pulling out my bullock-bouncer, a whip like cord, which I used to slash and muscle my way through the beasts that approached from all sides. Then I saw him. The head chief. The cult leader. The source through which the power of the darkness ran. I threw out incantation after incantations and bloodied my way over moving  closer towards him when I caught sight of the slaughtered innocents to his right. I was too late. The feeling of helplessness and rage was all consuming. Letting loose a blood curling yell, I threw a blade dead centre for the power-rush a mural drawn across the pelican stone drenched in the blood of the innocents. The shriek that rose was bone chilling but I was by now dead to such reactions. I moved and function on autopilot. I used the temporary distractions to run forward and step leap off a ledge that shot me arrowing forward onto the cult leader.

He burned. Scalding my flesh as I gripped him but I stayed my hold and tossed up my knee into his belly. Watching as he doubled over on impact I moved instantly to slide my blade through his back piercing his heart. Then I moved back and let momentum carry him forward and watched as he fell clean of my venomous blade.

Then I turned to leave. Knowing there would be no one else to stop me. Having fought off a pelican cult before I now knew what to expect but this had seemed all too easy. I glanced about uncertainly waiting for another attack. For something else to happen but there was nothing… only silence. Then I heard it, the slightest sounds but a quick survey showed nothing.

I wiped clean the blood off my blade over the edge of a flapping black robe. A call for help suddenly alerted me. It was a feeble call. It sound whisper thin but my enhanced hearing picked it up well enough. I glanced about spotting no exit routes other than the way I came in and I saw no innocents who were still alive. I went over to make sure but the strewn shorned-off heads of the innocents needed no further investigations. Still I closed the distance noticing and recognising the faces of the victims. As always they were young virgin women. I avoided looking at their mutilated bodies. There were no possible survivors. Shaking my head I was sure I was beginning to hear things. But I heard it again. The whisper was faint but unmistakeable.

“Help!”